


Fifteen. Fifteen. Fifteen.

by Shoshanna Gold (shoshannagold)



Category: House of Cards (US TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 16:12:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1095991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shoshannagold/pseuds/Shoshanna%20Gold





	Fifteen. Fifteen. Fifteen.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hangingfire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hangingfire/gifts).



Stamper was on the phone with his sponsor when the doorbell rang. "Hold on, Mitch. Somebody's here."

"Were you expecting anybody?" Mitch asked. "Because I have found that sometimes old friends can be very persistent. They show up and try to be helpful, but they can't help it, they want you to come back to them. It's not love, if it hurts, Doug."

Doug would have wanted to punch any other asshole who said that to him, but Mitch said it like he was quoting Oprah, or maybe mimicking a character on an after-school special. So he laughed, instead. "How are you supposed to know it's love, if it doesn't hurt?" he said. He'd meant for it to be a joke, but, as the words came out, he heard the truth in his question.

The doorbell rang again, two sharp staccato bursts.

"Yeah, man, that's a question, all right. Tell you what, I'll hold on while you get rid of whoever's at the door and then we'll take that one on."

"Yeah, okay," said Doug. "Just a minute."

He opened the door, and, fuck, if he didn't gape. He couldn't help it: Frank fucking Underwood was standing on his front step. _Congressman_ Frank fucking Underwood.

"Sir," he managed after a moment. 

The Congressman looked over him sharply, and Doug wished that he'd maybe changed into something – well, shit, wished that he'd at least changed his pants in three days.

"Douglas Stamper?" asked the Congressman, and Doug had this crazy thought that maybe it was the Fed Ex guy and Doug was hallucinating again. 

"Yes?" he said.

"Are you quite sure?" Underwood drawled at him, and Doug grinned.

"Yes," he said, more firmly. "Can I help you, sir?"

"I do hate to conduct business on the front stoop," said Underwood. "May I come in, just for a moment?"

Doug fought not to gape again. "Of course, sir." 

He had found his bearings again by the time they reached the living room. It was tidy, even if he wasn't, because the first thing that Mitch had done when he'd volunteered to be Doug's sponsor was come over and helped him clean. "You gotta live the change, Doug," he'd said. "It's not just bullshit that people spout at meetings. Your entire life has to change, down to the underlay beneath the carpet. In fact, it's usually better to move, so that you're not living in the place you used to drink, but maybe not today. Today we're just going to clean the house. A clean house is not a fucking metaphor: it's a living room floor that you can walk across without kicking a single empty."

Shit, Mitch. Doug looked at the Congressman in his living room, and chose himself, for maybe the first time ever. "Please take a seat. I'm sorry, but I'll be with you in just a second, sir. I have a friend on the phone, and it would be rude for me to keep him holding if we're going to talk."

Underwood nodded at him, and Doug knew that he wasn't imagining the respect that flashed across his face. "Of course, Doug. Say goodbye to your friend."

Doug nodded. "I'll just be a moment, sir," he said, stepping into the hall again. "Mitch, I'm sorry, I have to go. Frank fucking Underwood is here."

"What? The _congressman_? What the hell, Doug?"

"I don't know. He's in my living room, and he wants to talk."

"Go," said Mitch. "Call me when he's finished. No, you know what? Fuck that. I'm coming over. It'll take me fifteen minutes to get there in this traffic. If he's still there, I won't come in, but I bet whatever he's got to say is going to make you want a drink. Good or bad."

"Thanks, Mitch," said Doug. "I'll see you soon." He clicked off the phone and took a deep breath. He already wanted a drink. Fuck, he always wanted a drink, but that was slowly becoming a secondary urge, like breathing. Right now, with a congressman in his living room? He wanted a fucking drink, and then another one, to make sure the first one took.

Fifteen days, he told himself. Fifteen days, and he wanted sixteen more than he wanted a drink. He went into the living room and found that the congressman had made himself comfortable on the couch. Doug sat in the wing chair adjacent to him.

"I'm sorry to have kept you waiting, sir," he said. "What can I do for you today?"

"I'd imagine that you've heard a lot of bullshit in the last few weeks, Doug."

"Sorry, sir, I don't follow."

"Yes, you do. My esteemed congressional colleagues are one massive bullshit producing machine, Doug. And their staff is even worse. I can only imagine that you are wading hip-deep in saccharine, insincere, putrid excrement, shat out of the mouths of those who can't conceive of anything worse than little Jimmy getting 1300 on the SAT, thus screwing his chances of getting into an Ivy League daycare. I don't think any of them can possibly have something useful or insightful to say to somebody who lost his child and his wife within weeks of each other."

Fifteen, Doug said to himself. Fifteen days. "And you can, sir?"

"Honestly? No, I cannot. I love my wife, and she is very much alive. I have never had a child, and I never will. I cannot begin to imagine the grief that you have borne, and I have no idea how you might heal. I do know, however, that your salvation will not be found at the bottom of a bottle."

Doug froze. Nobody knows, he thought. Nobody knows, Jeffries doesn't know, he just thinks I took a compassionate leave, nobody knows – He took a deep breath. "You're quite right, sir. There is nothing that can replace everything that I have lost, and while I like a good drink now and then, I can't imagine that turning to alcohol at this point in my life will do me any good."

Underwood smiled at him. "Doug, you know, I've had my eye on you for quite some time now. Since you joined Allen's staff, really, and pushed that farm bill through at the eleventh hour. That was your third week on the job, I do believe?"

"Something like that," Doug said. "If I told you that it was all teamwork and that Congressman Jeffries was the driving force that ultimately gave that bill life, would you accuse me of adding to the same piles of shit I'm supposedly sitting in, sir?"

"I most certainly would. You and I both know that the only thing that Jeffries drives is a golf caddy. No, Doug, like I said, I've been watching you for a while."

"I'm flattered, sir." Fifteen. Fifteen. Fifteen.

"No, you're not. That's fine. I wouldn't be, either. I'd be mad as all hell that some presumptuous asshole was sitting in my living room, telling me about myself and talking about my job, when all I was trying to do was cling to sobriety with every last iota of my strength, because I had lost everything."

Fifteen. Fifteen. Fifteen. "Congressman, I appreciate you taking the time to come see me today, but I'm sure you've got a busy schedule, and you shouldn't let me take up any more of your time – "

Underwood interrupted him. "Douglas Kenneth Stamper. Born in Columbus, Ohio, in 1967 to Martin and Sharon Stamper. 1600 on the SAT. Magna cum laude, Rice University, 1989. Master's degree in Public Policy from Yale, 1991. Married to Kathleen Bridget Peters, 1992. Kathleen had a Bachelor's degree from Smith, but I'll let that go since she went to Ole Miss for law school. She worked for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is how you met. You were doing an internship at Brookings, and your roommate was a lawyer at the S.P.L.C. You and Kate met at a party or something – I admit, I don't know the finer details there."

Doug leaned back in his chair. "With all due respect, sir, this is getting a little strange."

"My intentions are pure, I promise you. But I'll skip past the wedding – even though the pictures of Kate were just lovely – and go to March 7, 1997."

Shit. Fifteen. Fifteen. Fifteen. "Sir."

Underwood's voice was kind. "You don't work for me yet, Doug. Call me Frank."

Fuck this shit. Really, fuck it all. "On March 7, 1997, James Calvin Stamper was born to Kathleen and Douglas Stamper, blissfully happy first-time parents. On March 28, 1997, doctors at the Children's Hospital diagnosed Jamie with a rare liver cancer and put him on the national transplant list. It was ironic, wasn't it, that it was the liver. Given that both of his parents had been known to like the sauce a little too much. Sure, Kate stopped drinking a good three months before she got pregnant, and I cut back out of sympathy." He stopped to smile sardonically at Frank. "Sorry, I hope it doesn't wreck the narrative if I don't refer to myself in the third person."

"I'm not here to torture you, Doug, I promise you that," Frank said softly.

"No, you said something about salvation, if I remember correctly." Doug said. "It's a pretty word, sir, even if it's not something I believe in. Because Jamie got placed on the donor's list. Infants are high priority, and his blood type could be easily matched. But there isn't much that can be done for babies with livers that were failing that fast. Kate was on maternity leave, so she lived at the hospital with him. I'd just started working for Jeffries a few weeks before he was born, so I couldn't take leave, not then. I couldn't quit, to be with my son in his last days, because we needed the benefits from my job so he could die in one of the best peds units in the country. So I sublimated, and I pushed through Jeffries' legislative agenda – hell, I made him a fucking leg agenda, and that's what I pushed through. Jamie lived for six months, but there's only so much you can take, as a parent. There's only so long you can watch your child live in pain. Kate started drinking again. I don't know how much. I was at the hospital when I wasn't at work, and when I was at the hospital, she was at home. I was drinking some too, though at that point I was relying more heavily on coke and speed. I didn't have time to sleep. I had a job, and a dying son, and a wife collapsing in on herself. And then, lo, the miracle happened."

"A liver."

"Yes. There was a liver. And it was transplanted into my boy. And his body rejected it. All of this happened so fast, Frank. You have no idea how fast. Twenty hours. We had twenty last hours, when we were supposed to have his entire life."

"I'm so sorry, Doug."

"But there's more. There's the part where his mother spent six weeks drunk out of her mind – and I was there for that, tempering the coke and the speed with bourbon, because when I was out of my mind with all of that, I could almost pretend there wasn't a huge gaping hole where my heart, my love, had lived. And then Kate – "

"She had a car accident." 

Fuck it, there were tears pouring down his face, he wasn't going to lose any more respect by wiping at them. "You say accident. I say she got blitzed and wrapped the car around a tree. Semantics. So, salvation, Frank? Because I gotta say, I don’t know what that even means anymore. Not for me."

"Sixteen days ago you buried your wife. Fifteen days ago you went to your first AA meeting. Don't tell me you don't believe in some kind of salvation."

"I don't want this all to be fucking meaningless," said Doug. "Not just this last year, but the thirty that came before it. I loved my wife. We had a beautiful son. I've done some good work, and I want to do more. I also want, more than anything, to have a drink. Just one more drink, just one more moment of peace. If only I still believed in peace."

"Work," said Frank. "Work is salvation. Finish your leave. Get your thirty day chip. And when you come back, come back to me. We're gonna be great, Doug. Together, we're going to run Congress. And from there, the world. I can't give you more than that, but I can give you that much."

Doug took a deep breath and pulled himself together. "Why? Why me? Why now?"

Frank shook his head, sadly. "I've never had anything to lose. Not really. I love my wife, you should know that, but I don't really have her. I don't think anybody ever could have Claire. She's so much more than that. And now you don't have anything left to lose. It's all a game, and there's only one way to play it. Like I said, you were impressive before, but now you're gonna be formidable. I need somebody like you. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, I need you." He stood. "I'll see myself out. And I'll see you in fifteen days. Good day, Doug."

Doug only half-heard the Congressman leaving, and then the door opening again as Mitch let himself inside. "Yeah," he said to Mitch. "I'm fine. Just - I need a minute before I tell you about this."

Fifteen days. Fifteen more, and he could have his work again. His work, but better.

Fifteen.


End file.
